The invention relates to a control unit for a machine tool or a coordinate measuring apparatus wherein the control unit includes, as an essential component, a control console for the machine tool or the coordinate measuring apparatus.
Control units having a control console have been known already for some time and function especially to permit the operator of the machine tool or coordinate measuring apparatus to read out important information remote from the measuring computer. This important information can, for example, be the position of the machining carriages in a machine tool or the position of the probe ball in a coordinate measuring apparatus. The control console has a LCD display for displaying the information which can be displayed selectively on the LCD display. In machine tools having electrical drives or in coordinate measuring apparatus having electrical drives, the control console further serves to permit the drives of the machine tool or of the coordinate measuring apparatus to be moved via corresponding operator-controlled elements, such as control levers. Also, other functions of the machine tool or of the coordinate measuring apparatus, such as the change of a machining work tool in a machine tool or the change of a probe pin in a coordinate measuring apparatus, can be triggered from the control console.
The control console can be connected to the control of the machine tool or of the coordinate measuring apparatus via a relatively long bus cable. For this reason, the control console can be placed very simply at different locations so that, especially for large coordinate measuring apparatus whose measuring table is often longer than 10 m, the operator can always be located in the vicinity of the workpiece to be measured in order to call up important information from this location or, if required, to control the functions of the coordinate measuring apparatus.
The function of the already known control consoles used to date is, however, very greatly limited because of the LCD display used which can only show alphanumerical information. It would be especially desirable if the operator of the coordinate measuring apparatus at the location of the apparatus not only had access to the control, but especially also had access to the computer of the machine tool or of the coordinate measuring apparatus.
It is an object of the invention to provide a universally useable control unit having a control console of the kind described above with which it is especially possible to operate the computer at a greater distance therefrom.
The control unit of the invention is for a machine tool or a coordinate measuring apparatus and includes: a control console having at least one operator-controlled element and a display screen; the operator-controlled element and the display screen being connected to a computer of the machine tool or the coordinate measuring apparatus; and, a converter for expanding or compressing a display screen signal outputted by the computer so that the entire content of the display screen on the control console is filled out with the display screen content of the computer independently of the image resolution of the display screen signal.
The coordinate measuring apparatus of the invention includes: a computer for evaluating measuring results; and, a control unit including: a control console placeable at different locations; the control console having at least one operator-controlled element and a display screen; the operator-controlled element and the display screen being connected to the computer; and, a converter for expanding or compressing a display screen signal outputted by the computer so that the entire content of the display screen on the control console is filled out with the display screen content of the computer independently of the image resolution of the display screen signal.
The basic idea of the invention is that, on the one hand, an operating console is provided with at least one operator-controlled element and a display, wherein the operator-controlled element and the display can be connected to a computer of a machine tool or a coordinate measuring apparatus. In addition, a converter is provided which expands or compresses the display signal of the computer in such a manner that the entire content of the display on the control console is filled with the display content of the computer independently of the image resolution of the display signal outputted by the computer.
Providing only a display on the control console, which is connected to the computer of the machine tool or of the coordinate measuring apparatus, is not sufficient to solve the task of the invention because the different machine tools or coordinate measuring apparatus have completely different computer types or software packages with completely different image resolutions.
A control unit of this kind exhibits the significant advantage that, on the one hand, a control unit is provided with which the computer of the machine tool or of the coordinate measuring apparatus can be operated remotely from the computer of the machine tool or the coordinate measuring apparatus and this control unit can additionally be utilized universally with a plurality of different computers.
As a display, basically any display is conceivable. Because of the fact that the control console often has to be displaced by the operator, no tube image display should, however, be used, rather, a very light TFT display should be used.
As a converter, a microcontroller can be used into which the particular resolution of the computer is inputted and which expands or compresses the display screen signal of the computer in correspondence to the inputted data so that the entire content of the display screen on the control console is filled with the display screen content of the computer.
However, it is especially advantageous to so configure the microcontroller that the microcontroller automatically analyzes the display screen signal outputted by the computer with respect to its horizontal and vertical resolution and, automatically, executes the expansion or compression in accordance with this analysis.
The converter can be an integral component of the control console or can be accommodated at the computer end.
As operator-controlled elements, at least a keypad and/or a mouse operator-controlled unit should be provided on the control console with the keypad and mouse operator-controlled unit being likewise connected to the computer so that the inputs at the particular operator-controlled element can be transmitted to the computer. Additionally, a speaker can be provided in the control console which likewise is connected to the computer and outputs the corresponding audio outputs of the computer.
The mouse operator-controlled unit can, for example, be a conventional computer mouse, a track ball or a mouse pad.
The operator-controlled elements and/or the display screen and/or the speaker can be connected to the computer via cables or can be connected contactlessly to the computer.
If the distance from the control console to the computer exceeds several meters when using cables having electrical lines, then line drivers should also be provided which amplify the display screen signal or the speaker signal of the computer and, furthermore, line drivers should also be provided, which amplify the inputs of the keypad or the mouse operator-controlled unit.
It is especially advantageous that a cable includes a lightwave conductor because, in this way, considerably higher quantities of data per unit of time can be transmitted without difficulty. Especially with a configuration of the cable of this kind, it is advantageously possible that, from at least two of the below-listed units, the data can be transmitted via a common line of the cable: the display screen 33; the keypad 23; the mouse operator-controlled unit 26; and, the speaker 31.
Of course, it is advantageous to transmit the data of all of the above units via a common line of the cable.
Furthermore, a transmitter module can be provided to which the above cable can be connected at the computer end and additional connections are provided for the keypad and/or the operator-controlled unit and/or a display screen and/or a speaker. In addition to the display screen, the keypad, the mouse operator-controlled unit and the speaker in the control console, the same units can be provided at the computer end so that the computer can be controlled from the control console as well as directly at the computer.
The control unit can be utilized in all possible types of machine tools (such as CNC milling machines or CNC lathe machines) as well as in different coordinate measuring apparatus, such as stand measuring apparatus, portal measuring apparatus or bridge measuring apparatus, which are either provided with drives or are manually operated.